This $476,208 federal Project Grant Award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) program, awarded on March 15, 2025, supports a collaborative research project led by Oregon State University (OSU) in partnership with the University of California, Riverside. The project aims to explore the roles of local solvation structures in expanding the stability of water-based electrolytes for energy storage technologies. The research team, composed of Professors Ji and Fang from OSU and Professor Greaney from UC Riverside, will use a combination of femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy (FSRS) and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations to study the impact of various salt concentrations, cations, anions, and pH values on the electrochemical window of aqueous solutions. The project seeks to elucidate key factors in the chemical environment that dictate the onset potentials for hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in aqueous electrolytes, with the broader goal of rationally designing aqueous electrolytes with significantly expanded or suppressed electrochemical stability windows for safe grid-scale energy storage and green hydrogen production.
Generated 4/1/25, 4:36 AM